Coyote Breath & Larry - you are both 100% correct in your feelings about shows like Dateline.   If they can't find information to back their story, they drop it. They look for guests who will be arguementative and colorful. The facts are secondary.

Remember the Dateline story where they put explosive charges behind the wheel of a car they were test driving? They were trying to show how unsafe the car is.   I don't know where you buy your cars, but mine rarely come with explosive devices behind the tires.

As I've mentioned in my previous points, I don't like to make accusations without facts. I will say that I spent 12 years working for a well recognized cable news organization in a technical capacity.   It left me with a real poor opinion of most journalists.   I really can't mention names publicly, but I saw things that left me disgusted. I remember one well know "journalist" (it sickens me to call him that) who was trying to prove a point about the time of a murder. One of the pieces of evidence was a cup of ice cream. The lawyers were trying to prove that because the ice cream did not melt the crime couldn't have taken place when it did.   This "journalist" decided to do a live on-air scientific test by placing a cup of ice cream on his desk during the show.   At the end of the show he had a cup of melted ice cream to prove HIS point that the ice cream would melt fast.   What he didn't show or mention was his asking one of the crew to hold the ice cream next to a hot studio light during commercial breaks. Several of us complained to the VP of our news division and the next night this "journalist" had to re-do apologize and re-do the test.

Of course there were some great journalists who I worked with that have a great deal of integrity. I don't want to paint a bad picture of all the media, but the point is, QUESTION what you see. Sometimes the obvious is not what really happens.

Ron